Dr. Kathleen Cranley Glass is a clinical ethicist and health care lawyer with the Clinical Trials Research Group at McGill University Faculty of Medicine’s Division of Biomedical Ethics. She is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Genetics and Clinical Ethicist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. Dr. Glass received her civil and common law degrees from McGill and a Master’s degree in political theory from the University of Chicago. She completed her doctorate in health law and bioethics at McGill in 1992. Her areas of research interest and publication are ethical and legal issues in: 1. consent with special populations (children, the elderly, psychiatric patients and research subjects); and 2. the design, review and conduct of clinical trials, especially genetics trials. Dr. Glass served as the Interim Director of NCEHR in 1994 and again in 1996. She currently serves on the Institutional Review Board of the Montreal Children’s Hospital, the Research Ethics Committee of McGill’s Faculty of Medicine, the Data Safety and Monitoring Committee of the National Cancer Institute of Canada, and the Executive of the Canadian Bioethics Society. She recently assumed the chair of NCEHR’s Consent Committee.

Dr. Glenn G. Griener is Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, where he teaches courses in research ethics and bioethics for the faculties of medicine and nursing and the philosophy department. He earned his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Western Ontario in 1985. He has been author or co-author of several published articles. Dr. Griener has served a number of national and provincial organizations, including the Biomedical Ethics Committee of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the Alberta Pharmaceutical Association. Dr. Griener is a member of the NCEHR Committee on Ethics of Research Design.

Dr. Joseph Kaufert is a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba. He is a community health researcher and medical anthropologist who has worked in the Departments of Community Medicine and Psychiatry in the Universities of London (England), Texas and Manitoba. Dr. Kaufert is the founder of the British Society for Medical Anthropology and was president of the Canadian Association for Medical Anthropology. He has authored and edited books on medical sociology, ethnicity, and euthanasia. He is currently involved in a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded research program examining the cultural context of ethical decision-making in negotiation of living wills, consent and organ donation agreements with Aboriginal Canadians. This research has addressed problems of translating biomedical concepts into frameworks culturally appropriate to the Aboriginal peoples. Dr. Kaufert has been involved in efforts to define ethical issues in community-based health research in Aboriginal communities. He continues to work in research and cultural-advocacy activities in both Aboriginal health programs and the disabled consumers’ movement in Canada. He is a member of the NCEHR Consent Committee.

Professor Daphne McDonnell Maurer teaches in the Department of Psychology at McMaster University, with affiliated appointments at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She teaches developmental psychology, including the design and ethics of experimentation with children, and conducts research on the development of visual perception during infancy. She is an active researcher with several research grants and numerous published articles. Her book, The World of the Newborn, has been translated into five languages. Professor Maurer has chaired numerous university committees and served recently on the Grant Selection Committee for Psychology at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). She is a member of the NCEHR Committee on Evaluation.

Professor Marcel J. Mélançon teaches in the Department of Philosophy, Collège de Chicoutimi, and he is a researcher in bioethics funded by SSHRC, Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ) and Programme de soutien des chercheurs de collège [Qc] (PSCC). He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and Ethics at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi where he is co-director of a graduate program in bioethics. He received a Master’s degree in experimental medicine with a specialty in genetics from Université Laval and a doctorate in philosophy from the Université de Fribourg in Switzerland. Professor Mélançon has authored numerous books and articles on ethical issues in genetics, with particular reference to genetic testing and screening. He is currently the Director of an inter-institutional and interdisciplinary group (GÉNÉTHIQ) in Quebec representing researchers in genetics, ethics, sociology and law, and co-director of the ethics division of the Clinical Ethics Network funded by the FRSQ. Professor Mélançon is a founding member of the Canadian Bioethics Society where he served as vice-president from 1986 to 1988. He is also a member of various bioethics committees. Professor Mélançon is a member of the NCEHR Committee on Evaluation.

Professor Evelyn Shapiro teaches in the Department of Community Health Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba and is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Health Policy and Evaluation in the same department. She obtained her Master’s degree in political science and economics at McGill University. Her long-standing major research interests are in the determinants of health status among the elderly, their use of health-care services and the impact of social policy on community and long-term institutional care. She currently serves on the Committee advising the National Health Research and Development Program on the selection of postdoctoral and health scholar awards and on the Committee advising Manitoba Health on public health priorities. Professor Shapiro is a member of the NCEHR Committee on Ethics of Research Design.

We would also like to welcome two new committee members to NCEHR, Dr. Charles Weijer and Dr. David Kaufman. Doctor Kaufman has joined the Communications and Education Committee. Dr. Weijer joined as a member of the Committee on Ethics of Research Design in the new year, and when Dr. Benjamin Freedman was hospitalized, he was asked to chair that committee.

Dr. Charles Weijer (pronounced VAY-er) is a Bioethicist at Mount Sinai Hospital and University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics in Toronto. He is also Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He was educated at the University of Alberta and McGill University. He received a B.Med.Sc. in 1985 and an M.D. in 1988. Dr. Weijer practised medicine in a number of locations in the north, including Rae-Edzo, a Dene community in the Northwest Territories. He then completed an Honours B.A. in philosophy in 1993 and a M.Sc. in bioethics in 1995. In May 1997, he completed a doctorate in experimental medicine, supervised by philosopher Benjamin Freedman and physician-researcher Abraham Fuks. His research was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Medical Research Council of Canada. From 1991 to 1996, Dr. Weijer was a member of the Clinical Trials Research Group at McGill University, a multi-disciplinary team examining ethical and statistical issues in cancer clinical trials. He has published more than twenty articles and book chapters on research ethics. He is involved nationally and internationally in discourse on ethics and research and, for example, is a member of the project Death in America, Task Force on Experimentation at the End of Life. His current research interests include issues in the selection of subjects for research participation, placebo-controlled trials, ethics and genetics research, scientific integrity, and community involvement in the design and conduct of clinical research. Dr. Weijer is the Chair of the NCEHR Committee on Ethics of Research Design.

Dr. David Kaufman has taught at Concordia, Simon Fraser, Saint Mary’s and Dalhousie Universities, in the fields of engineering, computer science and education. He has served as Director of Course Design for the Open Learning Agency (British Columbia’s distance education institution), and has been involved in staff training and organizational development in business, industry, and government settings. Dr. Kaufman has presented more than 200 lectures and workshops at universities in North America, Europe, Asia and South America. He has published more than 60 articles and co-edited a book entitled Distance Education in Canada. More recently, he was Director of the Medical Education Unit in Dalhousie’s Faculty of Medicine. He is an Associate Professor in the Division of Medical Education. He has been heavily involved with his colleagues in transforming the undergraduate medical curriculum from a lecture-based to a problem-based learning approach, and currently is applying problem-based learning in continuing medical education settings.

Council wishes to express its gratitude for the devotion and counsel those retiring Council members Dr. Elizabeth Flagler, Dr. Richard MacLachlan, and Dr. Roger Rittmaster have given NCEHR over the years. Elizabeth Flagler and Richard MacLachlan have graciously agreed to remain active on their respective NCEHR committees. We invite you to read the article contributed by Dr. MacLachlan on Bill C-47 that appears in this issue of Communiqué. We would also like to thank Dr. Pierre Paul Demers for his assistance in filling in as Interim Director of NCEHR until a new candidate was chosen. The Council is now pleased to announce the appointment of a new Executive Director for NCEHR, Dr. Richard Carpentier, who joined us on June 16, 1997. His biosketch appears below. Congratulations are also in order for Dr. Janet Storch, who has graciously accepted to be the Vice-President of NCEHR.

Dr. Richard Carpentier is a professor of ethics at the Dominican College of Philosophy and Theology in Ottawa, and a lecturer in the Nursing and Education Departments of the Université du Québec à Hull. He obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Montreal in 1995. Doctor Carpentier is a member of the Board of Trustees and the Board Ethics Committee of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). He also serves on the Bioethics Committee of the Centre hospitalier régional de l’Outaouais (CHRO) in Hull. Over the last 15 years, he has been involved in the review of research protocols and in the writing of research ethics policies for human sciences and medicine. He also served on many clinical ethics committees. Doctor Carpentier worked for several years at the Centre for Bioethics of the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal. As a founding member of Suicide-Action Montreal, he served on the board of this suicide-prevention organization and developed administrative, research and clinical policies, as well as a code of ethics which has received international recognition.